Open Writing

My Dad’s favourite feast was beef stew with lots of pickled red cabbage followed by a large dish of rice pud.

Most days that is what he had for his tea. Tea being the meal served at 5:30 p.m. when he arrived home from work.

As he came in at the kitchen door, Mother would start to dish up.

I wasn’t too keen on beef stew. I had my doubts about rice pudding. I hated red cabbage.

So my favourite time was after tea when Dad, who had eaten copiously, settled himself into an old cracked-leather armchair for a few quiet minutes before going outside to work in the garden.

He would pick up the News Chronicle, or John Bull, or a gardening magazine.

“What are you doing?” I would ask, tugging at the leg of his work trousers, already knowing what the answer would be.

“Reading.”

“What are you reading?”

“About greenhouses.”

“Read to me.”

He never told me to go away, no matter how tired he was. He lifted me up onto his knee then read to me for five or ten minutes. Often he would have to push my inquisitive head to one side so that he could get a clear view of the words.

When war broke out in 1939, he showed me maps of the various battlefronts which appeared in the daily edition.

I didn’t understand any of it. All that information about gardening, car maintenance, warfare.

Nevertheless, those minutes on Dad’s knee were the best part of my day.

He didn’t try to teach me my letters. He read articles which he found interesting. By doing so he introduced me to the magic, the delight, the never-ending fascination of the printed word.

When I started to attend the village school, I took to reading like a swallow to air. Soon I had gobbled up everything in the school library. (Remember, these were the war years. Books were in short supply. The school library was a single shelf of books in a lock-up cupboard.)

At the first opportunity I joined the village library, which opened for two hours on a Saturday. I went on jungle adventures with Tarzan, travelled in time and space with H.G. Well’s characters, solved crimes with Sherlock Holmes.

Not that I spent all my time reading. Every daylight hour, plus many a crisp, dark evening, was spent play out. Damming streams, racing bikes, climbing trees.

What times we had! The best of times!

Books were for rainy days and the long hours before bedtime in those imaginatively rich days before television.

They say that once you have mastered the art you never forget how to swim or ride a bike.

Same with reading. Once a reader always a reader.

I am still hypnotised by the printed word. Books, magazines, newspapers. I can’t stop reading.

A good book gives you a second life. A place where you can go for adventure and excitement. Somewhere completely different to the ordinary workaday world.

I’ve read hundreds of books, and I remember most of them. I also remember the books which I read to my sons when they were little.

The original idea was to read to them for ten minutes or so to lull them off to sleep. We became so absorbed in the stories that the ten minutes developed into marathon sessions lasting more than an hour.

We read Tolkien’s Hobbit then all three volumes of Lord of the Rings. We read Watership Down, The Box of Delights, all the Narnia novels, Arthur Ransome and more beside.

On winter’s nights I emerged from the boys’ bedroom shivering and blue, having been too engrossed in some tale to realise how cold it was.

Books are magnets. When I go into a house for the first time, I drift towards the bookshelves, trying not to make my curiosity too obvious, compelled to discover what they contain.

In dire emergency, when newspaper, magazine or book is unavailable, I read leaflets, publicity brochures, bus timetables.

Anything to get that printed word ‘fix’.

I’ve read happy stories, sad stories, amazing stories.

Recently I read a profoundly sad story. The reading standards of our school children are frighteningly low.

That’s bad news for the children. And bad news for the country.

Some people tend to blame the teaching profession for the decline in literary.
Perhaps teachers should shoulder part of the blame. But I am inclined to think that certain parents spend too much time on themselves and not enough time with their children.

Every child deserves a dad or mum who will read to them about greenhouses, apple growing, car maintenance…